


The Waiting Room

by RedHorse



Series: The Special [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Obsession, POV Tom, Pre-Slash, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:08:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Tom has been adrift for longer than he cares to admit. In an unexpected place, someone catches his eye.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: The Special [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575817
Comments: 27
Kudos: 375





	The Waiting Room

**Author's Note:**

> A one shot written for BemusedFox, who requested POV Tom first seeing Harry, first mentioned in Chapter 19 of The Special. Hope you enjoy!

Dolohov wasn’t answering Tom’s calls.

Though Tom’s needs weren’t urgent, Dolohov’s neglect was unacceptable on principle. So Tom did what he would never deign to do usually: he went to Dolohov instead of insisting Dolohov come to him.

It was a warm morning, like all the mornings throughout the year in Los Angeles. The fair weather annoyed Tom. Though he knew that the Ohio version of the season would chill him to the bone, he was almost looking forward to seeing bare trees and snow. That was how winter should look.

Technically, he supposed, it was still just late fall. He sidestepped a few signs for Thanksgiving specials cluttering the sidewalk outside a small grocery. Tom had never celebrated Thanksgiving in his life, unless one counted appearing on a few holidays episodes on the CLN sister network dedicated to culinary programs. He did like the taste of pumpkin, he recalled at the sight of a stand of pies in a bakery window. For some reason such things were only available this time of year, and Tom sometimes indulged in a frothy latte or tart. Otherwise all the signs of impending celebration meant nothing to Tom. They neither engendered spite nor envy. The holiday only marked passing time.

Dolohov’s office was on the second floor of an old building, one of the few that lacked a modern elevator. Tom approved of the space. He admired the height of the ceilings in the stairwell. Tom always took the stairs in any building, and in modern structures they were an afterthought, totally lacking in elegance. In buildings like this one, the architects had assumed they would always be used and studied. The stairs were wide, the turned bannister smooth with varnish under Tom’s hand. He look his time, listening to the sound of his footfalls and the whisper of his silk-blend chinos with each stair. 

The waiting room was quiet. Tom looked around with interest. It was nicely designed. Oil streetscapes from major cities were hung in dark mahogany frames on the plain white walls, but the locations were of the kind known only to frequent visitors and locals, so to the untrained eye they might not have been notable as Prague, Florence and Galway in a glance. Tom didn’t travel like he once had, but in his twenties he’d been insatiable. When he’d gotten his first infusion of wealth, he’d exhausted it within two years traveling from one world wonder to the next. He’d been so thirsty for experience, then.

Now he had a similar thirst, but he’d yet to find anything to quench it. This restlessness had gripped him for nearly two years, and as time passed it was harder and harder for him to find an outlet for the rising tension that resulted.

There were two young women in the waiting room, and one of them was looking in puzzlement at Tom, probably wondering why he was standing frozen in the doorway. The other was wearing headphones, staring intently at the screen of the cell phone in her lap. The room was small; Tom was going to have to either remain standing, or sit near one or the other of them. He chose the one who didn’t look like she’d notice him. It was only a matter of time before the staring one realized who he was and annoyed him with her reaction.

The chair Tom chose left one empty seat between him and the woman on the phone. He was significantly taller than her, and happened to glance over and clearly make out the images on the screen she was watching. A shaky, grainy image of a router bit secured with clamps to the edge of a battered workbench. The young woman had the volume so high on her headphones she must be compromising her hearing. Tom could hear someone speaking and the faint _ping_ when the clamps first made contact with the metal guide the person in the video was easing into position on a router board with square-backed hands and nimble fingers. 

The low quality made Tom a little nauseous, but still, he admired someone for realizing that milling your own tongue and groove was far from a lost art, particularly when the pleasant, if largely inaudible voice in the background was unmistakably that of a younger man. Tom was mostly disenchanted with the millennial penchant for “faux” this and “hack” that.

He had braced himself for plenty of that kind of thing in Ohio. He’d seen the cast portfolios already, of course. He’d required Draco deliver them to him before Draco looked at them himself. But a casual once-over of each cache had revealed no one of particular talent or interest, except perhaps the presumed winner, Amanda Nelson, who undeniably knew her fundamentals, even if she used them for the evil end of monotone paint schemes and copious amounts of chevron.

Impatient, Tom looked at his watch. He’d been sitting there eight minutes. There was a stifled gasp from the third occupant of the waiting room and Tom rubbed his forehead, wondering if the young woman would take his picture. Surely Dolohov had forbid photographs in his waiting room, but if this idiot didn’t take heed, retrieving her photograph and/or exacting punishment would require time and energy Tom really didn’t have to spare.

He glanced back over at the phone in the other young woman’s lap and found that the videographer had turned the camera to speak into it. That meant Tom had a sudden and startling view of green eyes, dark eyebrows, a square jaw and pleasantly tangled black hair.

It was a moment’s glimpse before the door to Dolohov’s office opened and his last patient drifted out, looking red-eyed like she’d been weeping, but with her chin raised, defiant. Dolohov watched her walk out from the doorway with the soft look in his eyes of a parent sending a child they’re proud of out into the world. What a sentimental idiot, Tom thought without malice, waiting for Dolohov to notice him.

Dolohov was tall, angular, a severe look he tried to mask with carefully-groomed facial hair, slightly overlong, soft hair, and lumpy tweed three-piece suits. When he saw Tom, his eyes fairly bulged and all the color above the neat line of his facial hair disappeared.

“Mr. Riddle,” he exclaimed in a whisper. “Why...you…?”

Tom stood smoothly with a calm smile. “I’m just here to check on you, doctor,” he said solemnly. “I was worried when you didn’t return my calls.”

“Dr. Dolohov,  _ I _ have the next hour, though…” the woman across the room began to complain, but one cool look from Tom silenced her. The other one, Tom’s favorite, still hadn’t looked up from her phone.  _ Can’t blame her _ , Tom thought, with a final lingering glance at the little rectangle that had contained for a flash that arresting face, and was now zooming in with gut-wrenching, unfocused starts and stops on the particular dimensions of the bit.

“I’ll have to cancel our hour, Monica,” Dolohov said, swallowing convulsively. “We’ll give you a free hour. Just call the service to reschedule. Mr. Riddle, I apologize. Please, come in, come in.”

Tom nodded courteously, making it clear who was doing whom a favor as he brushed past Dolohov.

Though he wasn’t sure he required any of Dolohov’s time now, after all. Those whirring, restless thoughts that wreaked dark mayhem in the back of his head were suddenly coiling, condensing, seizing a target. The resulting, focused intensity was the feeling that Tom had always lived for and had gone far too long without.

Once, Dolohov had called Tom “addicted to obsession.” That hadn’t gone over well, and as a result Dolohov would never dare to use that phrase again. But Tom was older and wiser now than he’d been on the day he’d challenged Dolohov for daring to diagnose him. Dolohov wasn’t entirely wrong about Tom. They just had central philosophical differences and Dolohov, a very ordinary man when it came down to it, wasn’t capable of Tom’s evolution, so they would never agree.

Tom didn’t think there was anything wrong with obsession.


End file.
